


from the ashes

by BansheeLydia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alpha Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 07:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12249471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BansheeLydia/pseuds/BansheeLydia
Summary: Laura Hale didn't die.Part of her thinks she should have done.





	from the ashes

**Author's Note:**

> please note that the Laura/Braeden is very, very minimal, and more of a prelude to them.

Jackson’s the kanima.

Jackson’s the kanima and Laura’s whole world crashes down around her.

—

She used to wonder, sometimes, in the pitch black of night in her shitty apartment, when Derek would pretend he wasn’t having nightmares on the couch in the other room and Laura would politely ignore it, and she would pretend she didn’t stay awake all night and he would politely ignore that, if there was some kind of _other_ , some place that people went to when they died.

She’d never really had any concrete belief in a higher power. She never ruled it out like Peter did; being a werewolf and seeing things that were supposedly only bedtime stories alive and in the flesh kind of knocked any cynicism out of her on that front. But she’d never been religious besides wondering sometimes if there was some kind of other side. Not necessarily heaven or hell, but some kind of abstract concept of a place that people went to once they died instead of just becoming…non existent.

It was comforting, back then. To think that her family weren’t just _gone_. That their lives weren’t just snuffed out and now there was nothing, just a void where they used to be. The thought of her mom just not _existing_ anymore was wrong, so wrong, so there had to be somewhere, some place beyond life, where she still ran as a wolf, where she still cooked that secret sauce that filled the house with the smell of tomatoes and garlic and herbs, where her laughter still made everyone around her smile. 

It was comforting to think that, wherever they were, they were watching over her. That her mom was still guiding her, helping her to become the alpha she was supposed to be instead of this…mess of a college dropout trying to rebuild from the ashes of their lives to protect and support her brother. She was always going to be the alpha; she was the oldest and she’d always held that same inner strength that her mom did, the spark that was needed to be the kind of alpha a pack needed. But it wasn’t supposed to be this soon. It wasn’t supposed to be forced on her suddenly, tearing her apart and rebuilding her as something she was in no way ready to be as her family burned to death in their own home.

So the thought of her pack supporting her, watching over her and Derek, guiding her from some kind of afterlife…it was comforting.

It wasn’t something she shared with Derek. They didn’t talk most days. Derek rarely spoke at all. She wasn’t ready to bring up their family or the fire, wary of what kind of reaction it would trigger. He was barely holding himself together as it was. But in the comfort and darkness of her tiny bedroom, with Derek’s heartbeat in the living room and the muffled sounds of the city outside her window, she closed her eyes and let herself think about it, let the concept wrap around her like a comfort blanket.

Now, though, the idea makes bile rise in her throat. The thought of her pack, of her mom and her alpha, seeing what a failure she is makes her burn from the inside out. 

She lets Derek down, again and again. Letting Kate get her sick hands on him again. Letting Peter almost kill them both before she put him out of his misery. Over and over, she proves she’s not the alpha he needs, and he still stands by her, but she can see the toll it’s taking on him. 

The first beta she turned, Scott McCall, resents her. And part of her is angry over that. He was bleeding out in the preserve after Peter, feral and crazed and constantly burning ever since that night, ripped his claws through him. Laura saved his life and he resents her for turning him into a werewolf. But part of her doesn’t blame him for rejecting her as his alpha, deciding to go it alone with his friends, because she’d only ruin him too. 

How much of a fuck up do you have to be for your very first turned beta to not want anything to do with you?

That didn’t stop her from turning more. Backed into a corner by Gerard Argent and his hunters. A war was brewing and Laura couldn’t let the Hale pack die with her and Derek. She couldn’t lose Derek too. She couldn’t disappoint her mom. She couldn’t let those brutal months of surviving, of clawing her way back from hell with Derek in tow, be for nothing. She needed to be stronger, and pack meant strength.

Isaac was first. He needed to be stronger, needed to get away from his home and his scumwad of a dad, and Laura thought that, if nothing else, she could at least offer him that.

Instead, his dad was slaughtered and Isaac ended up in a jail cell. Isaac doesn’t resent her, but there’s no connection either, no matter how hard she tries. She trains him with the others, tries to forge that alpha-beta bond, but it’s like empty space where that connection should be. He stands with her, his alpha, but she knows he’d rather be with Scott.

Then Erica. Another easy target. The bite curing Erica of her epilepsy was something Laura knew she could provide and there was a brief, bittersweet moment of relief over that one instance she didn’t fuck up. Until she saw Erica in Stiles’ lap and the only way to stop the seizure was to break her fucking arm, like she hadn’t caused these betas enough pain in this screwed up war. 

Boyd had been a good choice. The kind of choice Laura’s mom would make: a calm, level headed, but strong and moral beta. Someone to give the pack stability. Laura had been sure her mom would be proud of that choice, if nothing else.

Gerard took them and Laura failed in helping them. And they left her.

Then there’s Lydia. Lydia Martin who nearly bled out on the school field thanks to another Peter rampage. Laura had saved her, Stilinski at her side, and yet the bite hadn’t taken. By some miracle, the girl survived and healed, but not as a werewolf. Somehow, the most basic thing, the alpha’s bite, had screwed up somewhere.

And Jackson. 

Jackson, whose body rejected the bite. Who Laura was too scared, too ruined to help. 

Jackson, the kanima.

Laura made a _kanima_. 

There is a void inside of Laura and the rest of her is just paper skin and fragile bones clinging on. Whatever spark had been inside her before, ready for her future as an alpha, was snuffed out the night of the fire. She’s broken, everything about her is broken, and even if her eyes are red, the universe is proving that she’s not supposed to be an alpha. She spits out ruined betas and monsters.

Laura used to think she’d give anything to see her mom’s face again. Now, part of her is glad she never will. She thinks the disappointment would destroy her all over again.

—

Jackson is the kanima and he looks at her, resigned and ready.

Behind her, Lydia Martin sobs and Scott McCall watches on, and Laura can’t move. The show of love, Lydia pulling Jackson back from the brink, pulling him back into himself, it’s like razor blades in Laura’s esophagus. 

Derek’s gripping Jackson’s arms, claws drawing blood, but when he meets Laura’s gaze, he slowly let’s go, backing up a step. Jackson doesn’t move. He meets Laura’s gaze head on and shame makes her want to look away, but she can’t. She owes him this at least.

“I’m sorry,” she says, quiet, raw.

His jaw tightens. He spits blood past his teeth. “Just do it.”

Laura swallows back the fire in her throat, doesn’t let the tears fall because he’s owed better than her guilt, and she punches her claws through his chest and stills his heart.

Lydia’s sobs fill the empty space and the void inside Laura grows.

She walks away.

—

Jackson’s a werewolf.

The power of love, of all things, brings him back, gives him a second chance, like a pheonix bursting up from the ashes. 

Laura wonders, briefly, if maybe love is a higher power worth believing in. 

Jackson goes to Scott to learn control. Laura doesn’t blame him. Erica and Boyd are long gone. Laura doesn’t think she’ll ever see them again. She doesn’t blame them, either. She wonders, sometimes, if Erica’s got her license.

There’s a symbol on the front door of what used to be her house. She knows what it means. Derek knows what it means.

They paint the door and they don’t talk about it.

Isaac stays. Laura thinks that stubbornly loyal part of him is too strong, that he’ll stay even if means he’ll die standing with someone he doesn’t believe in, someone he barely even trusts.

She knows that, soon, she’ll have to push him away before he’s ruined too.

Jackson’s leaving. To London. He makes a wise crack about werewolves in London when he comes to tell her he’s leaving and she knows it’s a recycled Lydia barb. Laura envies that, a little, that two people can love each other so much that their words become each other words. 

“You didn’t have to come and tell me,” she says. The rotted boards of the porch creak as she shifts her weight.

Jackson shrugs, looking away, and Laura can at least recognize now when she’s fucked up. 

“I mean,” she clarifies, “That you don’t owe it to me.”

Pale eyes return to her face. He’s calmer in himself, Laura thinks, even more than when he was a human. He was made to be a werewolf. He just wasn’t made to be turned by Laura. With the right support, he’s become better than he ever was before he was turned, and Laura thinks that the universe might be balancing things out. She’s not meant to be an alpha. Maybe Scott McCall is.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

Laura gazes over his head into the trees. “Goodbye, Jackson.”

He turnes to go. Pauses. Tilts his head back towards her but keeps his gaze down. “McCall’s kind of a pain in the ass, you know? But he’s smart. He told me that the things I did as the kanima were beyond my control. That I don’t deserve to let it consume me.”

Laura doesn’t reply. A breeze whistles past the trees, raking leaves towards the porch. In the distance, she can hear Derek running loose laps around the property. He’s done that a lot since they came back to find the symbol on the door. He’s preparing, she thinks, and marvels at that bravery, at that stubborness, at the sheer loyalty of him to stand with her even though he knows what’s coming.

She’s going to make sure he’s far, far away long before the alpha pack arrives.

After a beat, Jackson looks at her. “Don’t let it consume you, okay?”

Laura doesn’t reply, and Jackson walks away.

___

After the alpha pack, after Boyd and Erica and Isaac and Cora, after all of Laura’s failures, she, Derek and Cora leave it in the dust. McCall is an alpha now, a true one, someone who _should_ be an alpha. The town is safe in his hands. 

It doesn’t take long for Cora to see what a disaster Laura is. She slips away from their motel room in the middle of the night without a goodbye. Laura wakes to the empty bed beside her and Cora’s bag gone. She suspects she’s going back to South America. Derek wakes and he doesn’t talk about it.

They have vague plans to go back to New York, but they run into trouble before they even make it halfway. There’s torture and questions about a desert wolf and more torture and Derek next to her, always next to her. There’s a blowtorch pressed threateningly to her ribs and she wants to laugh because she’s constantly burning anyway, do they really think this will work, but before they can follow through with the threat, there’s gunfire and screaming. 

Braeden bursts through the door in a blaze of bullets and blood. Her throat is scarred and she clutches the gun like an extension of her body and her mouth tips into a razor sharp smile when she meets Laura’s gaze.

Laura thinks that love might just be a higher power worth believing in after all.

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Laura Hale Appreciation Week on tumblr. 
> 
> allirica.tumblr.com


End file.
